


The Kid Who Shot Marshall Teller

by Deifire



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Eerie Indiana - Freeform, Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where did Dash X get the script in "Reality Takes a Holiday," and what would have happened if he'd actually succeeded in killing Marshall off the show? Eerie's resident sneaky grey-haired kid learns why you should always look before you climb in the back of a milk truck and why you should never, ever trust anyone who tells you they're from NBC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kid Who Shot Marshall Teller

_To Whom It May Concern:_

_My name is Dash X. Or at least that's what I call myself. No real first name, no real last name, no parents, and no memories of how I came to Eerie or who I was before I got here. If you read this far in this notebook, you know that already._

_What you don't know is I'm the kid who shot Marshall Teller._

_Since in the world as I know it, nobody cares if I'm dead or have disappeared under mysterious circumstances, if what I'm about to do works, it doesn't matter what I write here anyway. If it doesn't work...well, consider this my last confession and some advice to myself for the next life. Advice like don't climb into the back of a milk truck without looking to see what's in there first. Or never, ever trust anyone who says they're from NBC._

_And, most importantly, it's not a good idea to kill someone unless you're prepared to deal with the consequences. Not even on weird parallel reality versions of your own life where you're all characters on TV. And no matter what anybody promises you about fame and fortune._

_Don't understand yet? You will._

The boy ran his hands through his prematurely grey hair, sighed, and slipped the chain that held the key from around his neck. He picked up his pen again.

_Simon, I'm leaving you the key to the evidence locker. If I don't come back and you-know-who doesn't come back, you know what to do._

He read over what he had written, sighed again, and muttered something to himself about stupid retroactive continuity.

Then he re-locked the evidence locker, careful to leave the notebook and key outside where Simon could find it, picked up a single script page, and went out to change the world. Again.

***

**A Small While Ago, In A Sort Of Parallel Dimension**

It was one thing to _threaten_ to kill somebody off his own television show, Dash realized. One thing to taunt and tease and realize by the look of real fear on the guy's face that for the first time since you met him, you were finally the one with the upper hand.

It became another thing altogether when the prop man handed you the shotgun you were meant to be using in the big death scene, and you realized for the first time that you were actually going to have to go through with it.

"Um, Dash? Earth to Dash X! Is there a problem?"

Dash looked up to find the director leaning over him, looking decidedly cranky.

"This," Dash began, looking down at the gun in his hands. "Something about this doesn't feel right."

"Something about the gun?"

"Something about the scene."

"Okaaay. And what exactly is wrong with the scene? We've been through this. You're hunting Bigfoot here. You take aim. Just as you do, Marshall's going to comes around the corner. Bigfoot ducks, Marshall takes the bullet, and the rest is history."

"But couldn't I just shoot him in the foot or something? I mean, it worked with Mr. Cheney. That _was_ an episode, right?"

The director made a low noise of frustration deep in his throat while Bigfoot, or the actor playing Bigfoot, rolled his eyes. "Dash, the whole point of this scene is that we are killing Marshall Teller off the show! We're not curing him of lycanthropy! You can't write someone off a show with a injured toe!"

"But couldn't we...?"

"No! We can't! We stick to the script. Which, from what Mr. Schaefer tells me, was pretty much your idea, so I don't understand what the big deal is now."

"It's just..."

"Yes?"

"Is this thing loaded?" Dash asked, indicating the shotgun.

"Of course it's loaded! With blanks! Honestly, did everyone lose track of the difference between make believe and reality today? Dash, you've got exactly two choices here. You can do the scene and become the new star of NBC's _Eerie, Indiana_, or you can keep screwing around, and become a has-been teen actor who has nothing left in his life but the memories of his glory days playing a supporting character on a television show the network just cancelled. Now, which is it?!"

"Well, when you put it that way," Dash muttered. He forced a grin, hefted the shotgun, and took experimental aim at Bigfoot.

In all fairness, he never exactly made a decision to pull the trigger. He heard the director yell "Action!" just as Marshall--or Omri Katz, or whoever he was supposed to be in this reality--suddenly ran around the corner shouting, "Stop!"

The gun went off in Dash's hands.

And everything went black.

The next thing he heard was a familiar voice calling, "Dash? Sweetheart, it's time for breakfast."

***

It was Marshall Teller's room. If the New York Giants posters, the New York Giants bedside lamp, and the New York Giants trashcan hadn't tipped Dash off, the fact that Marshall Teller's parents were standing in the doorway was pretty much a dead giveaway.

"Come on, Dash, you don't want to sleep the whole day away, do you?" asked Marshall's dad.

"Huh?" said Dash. He looked down. Since when did he wear a Giants sweatshirt and boxers to bed? Marshall's secret evidence locker key around his neck was definitely new, too. He looked up. No lights and no cameras, just an ordinary ceiling. And four very solid walls.

"Are you looking for something?" asked Marshall's mom.

"No," said Dash. "No, nothing. I'm just pretty sure I'm not awake yet."

"Well, we'll let you get up and get around," said Marshall's mom. "Just don't take too long. We're having Edgar's experimental banana pancakes, and you know what happens if you let those get too cold."

Dash just stared as they left the room and closed the door behind them. "Something is very wrong here," he said to himself as he got out of bed.

He finally found the Teller's upstairs bathroom and checked himself out in the mirror. He still looked like Dash X. Same grey hair, sticking out at odd angles like it did when he'd been sleeping on it and hadn't bothered with a comb. He looked down at his hands. Same - and + marks. They remained resolutely visible even after he washed and scrubbed them a little longer and with a little more force than necessary.

Eventually, he went back to Marshall's room and searched the room for something he could wear in public. He finally came up with a plain red t-shirt and black jeans in what seemed to be his size. His own boots were under Marshall's bed and his long black coat was hanging in the closet. It was cleaner than he had ever remembered it and neatly pressed, but it was his. He put it on and went downstairs to the Teller kitchen.

Marilyn and Edgar Teller and Marshall's older sister Syndi sat around the breakfast table eating forkfuls of eggs, bacon and a strange yellow substance Dash guessed was probably the banana pancakes. Syndi glanced up and made a face at him as he approached.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He didn't think it would be Syndi, of all people, to be the one paying enough attention to realize he wasn't supposed to be here.

"Um..."

"Seriously, what are you doing wearing that coat in the middle of July?" Syndi continued. "I mean, don't you think it's going to get a little hot?"

July? Since when was it July?

"Maybe I'm cold. Maybe I'm coming down with something. What's it to you?" Dash asked, as he found a window and looked out.

The town of Eerie was out there, looking nothing at all like a studio lot, but it had definitely changed in other ways since Dash had last seen it. People were wearing shorts and tank tops and, if it wasn't a weekend, there were definitely too many kids on the street for this late in the morning. Dash became vaguely aware that Marshall's dad was asking him a question.

"What was that?" asked Dash.

"I asked if you and Simon had any big plans for the day," said Mr. Teller.

"Me and Simon?" asked Dash.

Everyone around the table nodded.

"And, um, Marshall...?" Dash began, then trailed off, not sure how he wanted that question to go.

Mrs. Teller flinched visibly when Dash said the 'M' word, then looked concerned. "Oh Dash," she said. "I know how hard you're trying, but don't you think after all this time, it's better to just let the police do their jobs?"

 

"It's not that Marshall wouldn't appreciate your efforts," said Mr. Teller. "But I think he'd want us all to go on with living our own lives."

Before the conversation could go any further, the front door opened. "Hi everybody," said Marshall's red-haired nine-year-old sidekick, as he walked in, sat down at the table, and helped himself to a couple of the weird-looking yellow banana things and some syrup.

"Simon," said Mrs. Teller. "We were just asking Dash if you boys had any big plans today."

"We're tracking something in the woods out behind the old Matheson place," said Simon. "From the prints, we figure it's either an alien life form or some sort of giant, mutant chicken."

The elder Tellers nodded, as if relieved things had finally gotten back on track.

"Simon, can I talk to you upstairs for a second?" asked Dash.

"Sure," said Simon. Then, "Hey!" as Dash grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him out of his chair and through the doorway before he had time to take another bite of breakfast.

***

"Something is very weird in the state of Eerie," said Dash, when he and Simon were finally in the secret spot.

"You mean something new? Besides potential alien poultry?" said Simon. "Tell me!"

"Well, this morning, I woke up in Marshall's room, wearing Marshall's clothes. And then there's this!" Dash pulled Marshall's key out from under his shirt and brandished it in Simon's face.

Simon nodded encouragingly. "And then what?"

"And Marshall's entire family is acting like I belong here. And they don't seem at all concerned about where Mars is. Mega-weirdness, right?"

Dash watched Simon's expression turn from excited to confused. "Dash, where did you expect to wake up this morning?"

Hollywood, Dash thought. Enjoying my hard-earned fame and fortune. Out loud, he said, "I don't know. The old mill, I guess."

"Dash, you haven't lived at the mill since..." Simon began. Then, "Oh, no! You didn't lose your memory again, did you?"

Dash sighed. "Pretend I did. Who am I supposed to be, why am I here, and why is everybody acting like I wake up here every day? And where's Marshall?"

Simon stared at him. "Wow, you really did lose your memory! You, um, may want to sit down for this."

Dash thought about arguing for a second, then slid down to the attic floor.

Simon sat directly across from him and began, "Your name is Dash X. Except that isn't your real name, because you showed up in Eerie with no memory of who you are or how you got here."

"Yeah, Shrimpenstein, I know that part."

"You remember meeting Mars and me at the old Hitchcock Mill? With the ghost of Grungy Bill and everything?"

Dash nodded.

"So you know you were one of Marshall's best friends?"

Well, no. That wasn't exactly how Dash remembered it, but he nodded again anyway.

"About three months ago, Marshall disappeared while the rest of us were out seeing _Revenge of the Corn Critters_." Simon hung his head. "I never should have left Mars to face the forces of weirdness on his own. Not even for a really awesome scary movie."

Dash wondered if he was supposed to give the kid a comforting pat on the head or something, then decided against it.

"They, uh, didn't find a body or anything?" he asked.

Simon shook his head. "They never found another trace. You were passed out in the front yard when we got home. Missing memory. Research shows it's a common experience after alien abductions and other supernatural encounters, so we figure that's what happened. Anyway, when the Tellers realized you had no real home and no parents, they decided to take you in and raise you themselves."

Okay. Given that Simon Holmes had pretty much become the Teller's third offspring by the time Dash had gotten involved with the Dynamic Duo, he really wasn't all that surprised that they'd decide to take in the weird stray with the grey hair. It was the part where Dash himself had supposedly gone along with it that he was having trouble imagining.

"So that was just three months ago? And now everyone's given up hope of ever finding him again?" Dash asked.

"Well, not everyone. Now we continue Marshall's mission, investigating Eerie weirdness and never giving up the search for our missing friend. Even though we haven't found any solid evidence of what happened to him so far," Simon suddenly brightened. "Say, I wonder if maybe the fact that you've lost your memories again means something! Like another paranormal encounter! Quick, what's the last thing you remember before you woke up this morning?"

_Marshall running around the corner, Bigfoot ducking, the shotgun..._

"I, uh, don't remember," Dash said. Then, "Hey, shouldn't we be checking out that mutant alien chicken thing?"

"You think the chicken knows something?" Simon asked.

"Um, yeah," said Dash. "I think the chicken might be a very important player in all this. Let's get going."

***

It was odd how quickly Dash got used to Marshall's former sidekick following him around.

Like during the all-day hunt through the woods, which ultimately revealed nothing except a few prints in the mud that, if you squinted hard enough, sort of looked like giant chicken feet. Or the sleepover in the backyard, which apparently Simon and Dash had been planning for days, during which they managed to get several blurry Polaroids of mysterious lights in the sky.

Simon even followed Dash out to the old mill the next morning, and was so quiet and unobtrusive about it that Dash only realized he had company after he was halfway there. He supposed he should have told Simon to go away so he could do this in private, but he didn't.

Anyway, he only found dust, old footprints, and a few of the props he'd used back when he was crashing there to convince the locals the place was haunted.

"What are you looking for?" Simon eventually asked him.

I don't know, thought Dash. I guess I thought maybe since I seem to be living Marshall's life in Marshall's house in this reality, just maybe he was out here living mine. But it doesn't seem to work that way.

He didn't say any of that, of course. Instead he just snarled and said, "I don't know. I guess I had a hunch about something, and I guess I was wrong. You don't have to follow me everywhere, you know."

Dash stormed out of the mill, got on his bike, and rode away. Simon followed him.

Dash forgot to tell him to go away this time, too.

As soon as he was alone, of course, Dash took the key and opened Marshall's secret evidence locker. He found a milk carton with Marshall's missing kid picture on it, and some other stuff that proved, yes, Eerie was a very weird place. There were a few things Dash recognized, like the haunted toaster and a hat from the Loyal Order of Corn. There were more things he didn't. He figured out what was strange about some of them, like the old radio that only seemed to play songs from the 1940s no matter how you turned the dial, but others, like what seemed to be the remains of a bologna sandwich from the early '70s, he didn't get at all.

And then he found Marshall's notebook. He turned to the first page and read the first words Marshall had written to whom it may concern: _If you're reading this document, it means I am either dead, or have disappeared under mysterious circumstances._

Well, one or both of those things was true. Dash read bits of the next few pages. It was Marshall's record of about a year's worth of Eerie weirdness. Reading the whole thing was going to take too long, so Dash flipped through looking for any mention of himself. Yep, there was the kid with the grey hair and how he'd helped prevent the ghost of Grungy Bill from robbing the Bank of Eerie. How the kid with the grey hair saved Mars from Mr. Cheney, the Eerie Werewolf, and how Marshall was grateful, even though he still didn't exactly trust the kid. How the kid with the grey hair only seemed to care about money, and how Marshall was terribly bothered by this, they way people are when they've never _needed_ to care about money, because _they_ have a family who has so much of it.

Eventually, Marshall's stories began to mention Dash X by name, and even referred to him sometimes "our semi-friend, Dash X" or "our associate, Dash X (who Simon and I still don't quite trust completely, despite all the times he's been semi-helpful)".

Marshall had always been smarter than Dash sometimes gave him credit for.

There was a lot of speculation in the following pages.

What if Dash X was an alien invader?

What if Dash X was some sort of robot? Maybe an evil robot sent back through time to kill Mars and Simon, because after all, Simon said, what better way to get a couple of kids to trust a killer robot than to make it look like another kid roughly their own age who acted strange but vaguely helpful ways until--pow!--one day its evil programming was activated and it was forced to complete its mission.

What if Dash X was secretly working for the mayor? Who had secretly helped build Eerie on some sort of weirdness central as part of an evil scheme and/or for profit?

_And what if Dash X actually read this and had feelings?_ Dash thought. _What if Dash X was just a scared kid with no one looking out for him who stole and lied and conned people out of money because it was the only way he knew to survive?_

What if Dash X acted like a jerk sometimes because he had less than a year's worth of memories to draw on when it came to being human--or a humanoid sort of alien or a robot, since the jury was apparently still out on that one--and wasn't quite sure how to behave in certain situations involving other people? What if he sometimes did horrible things that hurt the people he really cared about and only came to regret it later for the same reason?

Nah, that would be too strange for even professional weirdness investigators to contemplate.

There wasn't any story about the time the kid with the grey hair left a mysterious script in the mailbox and pulled Marshall into a parallel dimension where his life was actually a show on TV. Of course not. Marshall had never made it back to tell the tale.

Instead there was a blank page, and then the stories began again in Dash's own handwriting. First, how he'd woken up in the Teller's yard with no memories of the past few hours and what had happened to Marshall, then his further adventures with Simon over the next couple of months. Dash didn't remember writing or even doing any of it. He certainly had no memory of a time he and Simon had investigated S. Green's Ready-to-Eat Meaty Meals, Inc. and whether or not their secret ingredient was actually people, for example. But that had apparently happened just this past June.

In the end, there was nothing up there to give Dash any clue as to who he really was, or what he'd really done when he shot Marshall Teller. There was certainly no clue to tell him how to reverse it, even if he wanted to.

He picked up the Eerie Dairy milk carton with the missing Marshall picture on it and threw it across the attic. Then he shut the cabinet, locked the door, went downstairs, and didn't exactly cry himself to sleep for the first of several nights.

The next day he got up and pretended to look for evidence with Simon again.

In the meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Teller, and sometimes, even Syndi, kept Dash fed, clothed, warm, and supplied with pocket money. They looked out for him, worried about him, encouraged him to go have fun, and made sure he got to bed at a reasonable hour. It wasn't Hollywood, but it was safety and security and plenty to eat and people who seemed to genuinely care about him.

It was driving Dash slowly insane.

Eventually, there was only one thing left to do.

***

As he walked through the door of the World O' Stuff, Dash braced himself for shouting. He had technically been banned for life from the place for repeated counts of shoplifting and one count of accidentally almost helping send the entire population of Eerie to retail Hell.

It wasn't like this had ever stopped Dash before, but this time was different.

And then, on cue, was the shouting.

"Well, if it isn't Dash X!" called Mr. Radford in a loud, cheerful voice. "How's about a black cow?"

"Me?" mouthed Dash, pointing to himself.

"Well, I don't have any other customers named Dash X," said Mr. Radford. "Come on in, have a seat!"

Dash walked up to the counter and warily took a seat as Mr. Radford sat the cow in front of him. It looked like an ordinary black cow. He took a sip. It tasted just like an ordinary black cow. It was just the first one Dash could ever remember obtaining legally. He drank the whole thing down. It delayed the part where he was going to have to talk.

"Well," said store owner at last, in that same disturbingly cheerful tone, "What can I help you with today, my boy?"

"I think I need some advice," said Dash. "I don't know. Do we do that sort of thing?"

"Of course we do," said Mr. Radford. "You and Simon are usually in here at least once a week. Say, you didn't lose your memory again, did you?"

"No, but everyone else seems to have," muttered Dash.

"Really?" said Mr. Radford.

"Yeah, they keep forgetting things like they don't trust me."

Mr. Radford just looked puzzled.

"Look, about three months ago, I..." Dash stopped, then decided to take a different approach. "Let's say there's this TV show."

"Okay," said Mr. Radford. He picked up Dash's empty glass and wiped the counter underneath.

"About three months ago, the main character gets kil...uh, written off the show. And they replace him with this new guy who's completely wrong for the part. Only the thing is, the writers can't seem to figure that out. So now everybody treats him exactly like the old guy. And none of the other characters seem to care much about what happened to the old guy. It's like they're even starting to forget he ever existed."

Mr. Radford nodded. "I can understand how that would be frustrating," he said. "But that's television. The show must go on."

"What do you mean?" asked Dash.

"Well, I'm guessing you have an established premise and a regular supporting cast on this show. Am I right?"

Dash nodded.

"So an actor leaves the show, but there's still a role to fill in the story. And there's only so much you can change things and still keep the same premise and give the other characters a reason to be there. Now, a good writer can make this work without demanding a lot of extra suspension of disbelief from the audience, but a sloppy writer might just do exactly what you described." Mr. Radford leaned closer to Dash. "You know, on some shows, they even get a different actor to play the exact same character. The audience is supposed to buy it, and sometimes nobody on the show itself ever even notices."

"You're kidding," Dash said.

"'Fraid not," said Mr. Radford.

"Now that's just crazy," said Dash. "But back to this new character. Over time, is he going to start acting more and more like the old character? Like finding out he actually likes hanging out with the old character's best friend?"

Mr. Radford frowned. "Possibly. You're getting into specifics of continuity and motivation, and I've never seen your show. Frankly, it sounds pretty weird."

"Oh, you have no idea," muttered Dash. Then, "Okay, but say I sort of want the old guy back. As much as I hate to admit it, the show doesn't really work without him. What should I do?"

"Well, Dash, I'm not sure there's a lot you can do."

"Please, Mr. Radford. There's got to be something."

"Hmm," Mr. Radford pondered. "I suppose you could always try writing the network."

Dash shuddered. No. The last thing he wanted to do was attract the attention of the network.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said. "Thanks anyway, Mr. Radford.

Dash made a big show of swiping a genuine souvenir Eerie, Indiana travel mug on his way out the door. He glanced back at Mr. Radford as he slowly and obviously slipped the mug inside his coat, daring the store owner to notice.

Mr. Radford just waved and told him to have a nice day.

***

It had all started with meeting the network executives. Well, first it had started with the milk truck.

Okay, technically it had started with shoplifting from the World O' Stuff. Again.

This had been back when Marshall Teller still existed and reality still made some sort of sense, so of course, Mr. Radford chased him out of the store shouting about people who ruin the retail experience for everyone else and how he was going to call the police.

Dash was about half a block away when he heard the sirens.

He wasn't precisely sure they were for him. Mr. Radford made a lot of empty threats, after all. Still, there were times when hiding was the better part of valor. He looked around. Ducking into the Eerie Savings and Loan and pretending to be a legitimate customer was right out. Eerie Video was a slightly better possibility, but Mr. Serling, the creepy guy who ran the place, had a tendency to appear out of nowhere and startle innocent shoppers who were only trying to walk out with the rental copies of the _Terminator_ movies despite the small problem of not actually having an account.

Then Dash saw the milk truck. It was just an ordinary-looking milk truck same as any other in town, with the words "Eerie Dairy" printed on the side in large, friendly blue letters. He figured he could hide out in the back until everything blew over. He tried the latch. It wasn't locked.

Dash stepped into the back of the truck without looking first. It was the first of many bad ideas.

He fell.

He didn't hit anything solid right away. Instead he kept falling for a long time, and when he finally hit the ground with an impact that left him temporarily breathless, it felt and tasted like carpet.

He was in somebody's office. He found himself staring up past some very expensive looking furniture to what looked like a representation of a brightly colored peacock on the wall. It was flanked by the symbols + and -.

And a voice behind him said, "Dash! You're late."

Dash rolled over with a groan and found himself staring at a couple pairs of expensive shoes. He scrambled to his feet just as the owner of one pair, a fiftyish-looking, grey-haired man in an equally expensive suit stepped forward and extended a hand. "Dash, my boy! So nice of you to join us!"

Dash automatically flinched backwards. And that was before he noticed the man's outstretched hand bore a very familiar mark.

"You're..." he said.

He stepped back even further. Unfortunately, this meant he nearly collided with one of the other figures in the room, a woman with long brown hair wearing a white business suit. It was an unfortunate fashion choice for somebody eating what appeared to be cheese puffs. She held the bag in one hand as she slipped the other arm around Dash's shoulders in an entirely too familiar gesture.

"We're with the network," she said. "You can just think of us as very important NBC executives. Snack?" she asked, offering the bag.

Dash shook his head. He'd been doing a lot of research in the occult section of the Eerie Public Library since waking up in Weirdsville, and one important survival tip that he'd picked up was that when you seem to have fallen into a world that isn't your own where strange people are offering you food and drink, it's seldom a good idea to say yes.

"Drink?" asked the man, gesturing toward what looked to be a selection of alcoholic beverages on a nearby bar.

"I'm not even old enough to...am I?" It occurred to Dash that was one of the things about himself he didn't exactly know. He was definitely going to use that excuse next time he got caught with a fake I.D.

He glanced at the woman's hand, which currently brushing orange dust on his shoulder. Yep, there was the infamous + symbol. The hand holding the bag bore the -.

He twisted out of her embrace, about to say something very rude about people who used his coat for a napkin. Then he paused, looked up at her hair, then down at her hands again.

"Oh. The hair," she said, following his gaze. "Miss Clairol. Our little secret. If it leaves this room, you don't." She gave him a dazzling smile. "Anyway, are we ready to get down to business?"

Dash forgot to get mad about the coat. "What business?" he asked.

"The business of making you our new star, of course," said the man. "Jose, can you give Dash the script, please?"

He indicated the third person in the room, a man with long, curly hair who was wearing an incredibly loud shirt. He was sitting in a chair off to the side sipping something pink out of a glass. At the network guy's prompting, he hastily put down his drink, crossed the room and handed Dash a ream of pages.

"I think you'll be very pleased with how this one ends," he said to Dash.

Dash looked at the read in his hands. "Eerie, Indiana, 'Reality Takes a Holiday' Final Draft by Jose Schaefer? What is this?"

"It's the script," said the guy Dash guessed was probably Mr. Schaefer himself. Dash looked. There were no visible marks of any sort on the back of this guy's hands.

"Oh, he's just the writer," said the network man, noting Dash's look. Jose Schaefer looked wounded, started to say something, then thought the better of it and closed his mouth.

"So, he's a writer, and this is a script for...Eerie, Indiana?"

"Specifically, for the season finale of NBC's _Eerie, Indiana_. And Marshall Teller's very last episode," said the network guy.

"What?" said Dash.

"See, we have a little problem with meddling do-gooders in the space-time continuum..."

"Declining ratings," interrupted the woman. "He means declining ratings."

"Right. Declining ratings. Anyway, we've decided it's probably for the best if we try a different conception of Eerie. One with you as our lead, Dash."

"Okay, not to repeat myself unnecessarily here, but again, what?"

"I mean, let's face it. The Marshall character's had his day. Besides, the way he's written...so honest and wholesome and innocent. Doesn't it just get on your nerves?"

Dash neither liked nor trusted this guy, but he had to give him that one.

"Now the Dash X character...the kid with the mysterious past and exciting sense of unpredictability and moral ambiguity, that's the kid we think our audience is going to go for. So we're writing Marshall off the show and replacing him with you."

This still didn't make any sense, but it was starting to sound intriguing. "And how exactly are you going to do that?" he asked.

"This is the brilliant part," Jose Schaefer spoke up. "We're going to have Dash kill him!"

"What?!" said Dash. "No way. I'm not saying Teller doesn't annoy me sometimes, but not enough to murder the guy!"

"Murder?" The woman laughed. "Dash, sweetie, you know we think it's cute--a little weird and disturbing, but cute--the way you slip into character sometimes, but we need to get back to real life here. And in real life, Marshall Teller is just a fictional character on a television show. He's played by an actor named Omri Katz. Just like in real life, his lovable little amnesiac friend Dash X is a person dreamed up at a writer's meeting. In reality, you leave the studio every day and go home to your nice house with your nice family, and enjoy all the nice money you earn as an actor."

Dash wanted to believe it. Unfortunately, he knew when he was being played. "You're lying," he said. "That's not real life." He started looking for the door. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be one.

"Ah, but it could be," said the man. "Real life is what you make it. Especially for you."

Dash paused. "What do you mean?" he said at last.

"I mean, I don't think you see what we're offering here. All you need to do is accept that you're our new star, and everything you ever dreamed of is yours. Fame!"

"Fortune!" said the woman.

"Fangirls!" added Jose Schaefer.

Dash hadn't even gotten around to dreaming about fangirls yet, but he had to admit they sounded pretty good as part of the whole package deal. Still...

"And in return for all this, all you want me to do is kill Marshall Teller?"

"Oh, don't worry. It'll be an accident," said the woman. "A pretend accident in which a pretend character kills another pretend character, remember."

"Good point," said the network man.

"We want the audience to still be sympathetic to Dash, after all," said Jose Schaefer. "He would never kill his best friend on purpose, of course. But if there was a tragic accident..."

"He'll spend a couple episodes at the beginning of the next season tortured by remorse," said the network man.

"A tragic past combined with a mysterious origin," said the network woman. "The audience will adore it. This could be your breakout role."

Dash thought. "What do you want me to sign?" he asked. He'd been through this sort of thing before, and wasn't the type to get taken by the same trick twice.

"We don't want you to sign anything," said the man. "We just want you to read the script. And if you like it, well, just share it with Marshall for us."

"You're really going to love it," said Jose Schaefer. "The death scene is particularly beautiful. I even cried a little when I wrote it. Of course, if you have any ideas for improvement..."

"I do this, and I'll be a TV star?" asked Dash.

"You'll have everything you ever wanted," said the woman. "Promise."

"And I'll get my bonus?" asked Jose Schaefer.

"Yes, one custom DeLorean," the man replied.

"Okay, but let's say--just for the sake of argument, mind you--I don't want to do it," said Dash. "What then?"

The network executives' faces hardened.

"Then I'm afraid we'd have no choice but cancellation."

"For all of Eerie."

"Forever."

"But I'm sure it won't come to that," said the man, once again putting an arm around Dash's shoulders. "You're a sensible young man who knows what he wants and takes it, and I know you'll make the right decision once you've had time to think it over. Now, let me show you out."

He led Dash, not to a door, but to a giant TV screen covering one wall of the room, and pushed him through.

And Dash woke up in the old Hitchcock Mill, clutching "Reality Takes a Holiday" in his left hand.

He read it, of course. The whole thing started with Marshall complaining in a very Marshall-like way because his loving family and loyal best friend wanted him to come with them to see a scary movie, which was, for some reason, embarrassing beyond endurance to Our Teen Hero. The whole thing was so terribly tragic in a spoiled suburban adolescent sort of way.

He read to the part where Our Hero, who let his family go to the movie without him, went out to the front yard, and faced the tragic consequences of that decision.

Dash laughed.

And kept reading. And kept laughing.

In the end, he'd decided to leave the script in Marshall's mailbox. The whole thing was simply too good not to share, after all. Besides, if it wasn't real, what did anybody have to lose?

And then the world went black.

The next thing Dash knew, he was standing on the "Eerie, Indiana" set talking to an actress who looked exactly like Marshall's mom, except that she was wearing a low-cut leather top and sporting a fascinating tattoo.

And the rest was history.

***

No, Dash definitely didn't want to talk to the people at the network. Even if they were somehow _his_ people, they were also completely untrustworthy and the ones who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

Mr. Radford obviously wasn't going to be any more help.

There was only one other thing left to do.

***

"Dash, what are you looking for?" Simon asked, when they went out the next day.

"Milk trucks," Dash said.

Simon nodded. "That's a good idea. You know, a statistically improbable number of kids get hit by milk trucks every year in Eerie."

"Huh," said Dash. "Weird. But no, I'm looking for a specific milk truck."

"What's it look like?" asked Simon.

"Every other milk truck," said Dash. "That's kind of the problem."

"Yeah," said Simon. "I can see that. Why are we looking for it again?"

"Possible Eerie mega-weirdness," said Dash.

That was all the explanation the kid seemed to need. They finally found one parked outside behind the bank that day. It was even unlocked. But when Dash looked in the back, all he found was milk and stuff. Same thing with the next three or four trucks.

Some late night breaking and entering at the Eerie Dairy yielded pretty much the same result.

In the end, Dash never did run into _the_ milk truck.

The truck ran into him.

Granted, it was pretty much his own fault. He'd gotten into a routine of investigating Eerie with Simon when he wasn't trying to deal with his own problems and kept forgetting he was still technically new enough at this to keep making rookie mistakes. Like the one about not riding your bike into an intersection against the light because you're too busy trying to collect recorded evidence of that jerk Serling from the video store doing his disappearing trick to actually look where you're going.

He heard the squeal of breaks and saw a flash of blue and white, then the world spun, before he collided with a wall of grey he was pretty sure was the pavement.

He heard Simon screaming, then a voice that sounded very much like it belonged to an old man yelling "You should tell your friend to be more careful, Simon!"

Then, "How do you know my name?"

He didn't hear the old man reply, but heard Simon shout "Holy corn! You're...you're..."

"I'm the guy who's going to take it from here," the old man said.

Dash tried to open his eyes at that point, tried to tell Simon to run and get away from the old man. Or better yet, to get _Dash_ away from the old man.

In the end, instead of doing any of those things, Dash X passed out.

***

He woke up in the front of a milk truck, being splashed in the face with milk by one very cranky looking elderly milkman.

"Hey!" Dash yelled.

"Good, you're awake," said the milkman. "I hear you've been looking for me."

"Yeah, I might be. How do you know Simon? Do you know who I am?"

"You're the sneaky kid who broke into my truck," the milkman said. "And may have done some serious damage to reality in the process."

"Hey, I thought there was just milk and stuff back there! Not some portal to a parallel bizarro universe!"

"This _is_ Eerie," the old man said.

Dash shrugged. The guy had a point.

"Now I suppose you're wondering what happens when you kill somebody on TV," the old man said.

"How did you know about...?"

"Come here," said the man. He got out of the truck and motioned for Dash to follow him around to the back.

"You want me to go inside?" asked Dash when they got there.

"Not this time. Just step up and take a look through the window."

Dash did.

It took him a split second to realize he was looking at the back of Marshall Teller's head. A Marshall Teller who was eating breakfast and for some reason acting extremely nervous about it.

Marshall's mom suddenly blocked Dash's view. "How are the pancakes?" she was asking.

"Great," Marshall was saying, in a tone of voice that indicated they were anything but. From what Dash could see, they didn't look like weird experimental food. Then again, in the Teller house, maybe that was a problem.

"I got the recipe out of my Foreverware catalog."

Oh. Dash had read about Foreverware in Marshall's secret notebook. He couldn't see Marshall's expression, but could tell by the sudden stiffening of his body that this was bad news. He began to get a small suspicion of just what he was looking at.

He suddenly heard Marshall say, "I'm going to get some milk," and watched him turn around and walk right toward the window Dash was looking out of. Which was, of course, on the back of the milk carton. Dash's view shook and he suddenly found himself face-to-face with a very enraged Marshall Teller.

"You!" Marshall whispered.

"Wait. You can see me?" said Dash.

"Of course I can see you!" said Marshall. Apparently, he could hear him, too. "You did this to me! Thanks to you, I'm stuck in reruns! Forever!"

"Yeah, well, I'm trying to work on that," said Dash.

"What, are you trying to find a way to kill me even deader?"

"No, I'm..." Dash began.

But Marshall wasn't listening. Marshall was looking below Dash at something written on the milk carton. "Wow," he was saying. "Is that your real name? Is that where you really come from?"

"What? Where?" said Dash, and looked down. There was, of course, nothing there but his own boots. He looked through the window again, but the scene wasn't there. No Marshall, no Teller family dining room, and not even any milk.

Dash jumped off the truck and faced the old man. "Bring him back!"

The milkman just shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't."

"You have to! He knows something! He just found out who I really am!"

The old man smacked him upside the head. "You were getting hysterical," he explained when Dash glared at him.

"Yeah, well, if you're not going to do anything, I'll just have to go in and get him myself," Dash said. He started to reach for the door latch, but the milkman grabbed him by the back of his coat and hauled him away from the truck. He was surprisingly strong for an old guy.

"I'm afraid it really doesn't work that way," the milkman said.

"But I need him here! I need him to tell me my real name! Besides, he doesn't deserve to spend eternity in reruns because of something I did."

The milkman sighed. "I'm afraid all of that is true. Or will be, eventually. But not quite the way you think."

"Huh?" Dash said.

"Don't worry about it. I'm just an old man rambling. The trouble is, I can't bring him back. But you can."

"How?"

The milkman reached down the front of his jacket and pulled out a single piece of script paper. He waved it in Dash's face.

Dash read it.

"I don't understand," he said when he was finished.

"Do you remember when this happened?"

"Yeah," said Dash. "Back on the studio lot. Mars and I had a fight. He had a little problem with the big death scene."

"Do you remember what you said?"

"Sort of," said Dash.

"Do you remember saying that line at the bottom?" the milkman asked.

Dash read it again. "No," he said. "But how is saying _that_ going to help anything?"

"Trust me," said the milkman.

"Why?" asked Dash.

"Because _I_ trust you. I've got to do some recalibration on the truck here in the meantime. But I trust that if you really want to undo what you've done, you'll meet me here first thing in the morning. I'll take you back to the point where you can change things, you say exactly what's written on the script here..."

"And it'll be like none of this ever happened?" asked Dash.

"If you do it right, everything will go back as it should be."

"And I'll go back to being who I was? The weird homeless kid with the grey hair?"

"You'll go back to being who you were."

"And Marshall?"

"Marshall will be back in Eerie. And, yes, Marshall will be the one who tells you your name and helps you figure out just exactly what being you really means."

***

Dash found Simon still sitting by the bikes. Or rather, by one bike and the mangled remains of something that used to be another one. He was holding what was left of the video camera.

"How are you feeling?" Simon asked.

"Like I just got hit by a truck," Dash said. "How about you?"

"Confused," said Simon. "Look, I don't think that guy was just an ordinary milkman..."

"He wasn't," said Dash.

"I think Marshall ran into this guy once before. He didn't tell me much. He just said I'd probably find out one day when we were older. You don't have to tell me, either, if you don't want to."

Somehow, that almost prompted Dash to spill everything right then and there. But because there were some conversations you just don't want to have on your last day on the planet, he finally said, "Hey, Simon?"

"Yeah?"

"Is there anything we haven't gotten around to this summer that you've always wanted to do?"

"Well," said Simon. "I've always wanted to check out those rumors about the lake monster that lives in the pond behind Buck Houghton's farm."

So they did.

***

Dash hid the remains of his bike behind the garage when he got home. That was another conversation he didn't want to have on his last day. He was already in enough trouble when he walked through the door.

"You're late," said Mrs. Teller with a stern expression.

"I'm...sorry?" said Dash. He had never quite gotten used to the concept of curfew.

"I know," said Mrs. Teller. "It's the end of the summer and you and Simon want to pack in as much adventure as possible before school starts. Still, Mr. Teller and I care about you and we worry."

"Yeah, okay," said Dash. "I'll, uh, try to keep better track of time in the future, Mrs. Teller."

"Speaking of school, we wanted to take you and Syndi back-to-school shopping next week. And Simon, if he wants to come. We'll get you some supplies, some new clothes. Maybe even some outfits in a few new colors."

Dash looked down at what he was wearing. Black pants, red shirt, black coat. Pretty much the same as every other outfit he wore out in public. "I like these colors," he said.

Mrs. Teller laughed. "Yes, we know you do. Just don't limit yourself if you don't have to. You may wake up one day and realize you're not the same person."

Dash startled. "What?"

"I mean who you are and how you want to express yourself can change fast when you're a teenager. Just ask Syndi some time about the sudden end of her big hair phase. Who knows, maybe one day you may wake up and realize you're a person who wants to wear, I don't know, blue?"

Dash made a face.

"Or yellow?"

Dash made an even more disgusted face.

"Or you can keep wearing variations on the same outfit for the next hundred years if that's what you want. You know we love you no matter what." She walked over, leaned down and kissed Dash on the forehead. He was too stunned to flinch away. "Just try to call next time you're going to be so late, okay?"

Dash nodded. "Um, goodnight, Mrs. Teller." he said, and ran up the stairs.

"Goodnight, Dash!" she called after him. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Not if you're lucky," he said under his breath. He turned when he reached the second floor and watched her walk away, then he climbed the stairs to the attic and wrote his final entry in the secret evidence notebook.

And memorized his line.

***

He met the milkman at sunrise.

"I bet you weren't sure I'd be here," he said to the old man.

"Oh, I was always sure you'd be here. You're not as unpredictable as you like to think, you know."

"How do you know so much about me?" Dash asked.

"I'm a milkman," said the old guy, as if that somehow explained everything. "Now, close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Because that's how this works. Now, do what you're told for once."

"Fine," Dash said, and closed his eyes. He heard the door on the back of the truck open.

"Mind your step," the milkman said, as he guided him up on the back of the truck.

"Now what?" said Dash, when he was in position.

"Now, click your heels together three times and say 'retcon'!"

"Wha...?" Dash began before he was violently shoved forward.

He fell down into darkness and felt the world turning at odd angles.

When he came to, he was on top of Marshall Teller, pinning him down on the ground.

It felt a little more awkward than the first time he'd been through this fight scene.

"Why should I?" Marshall was shouting. "I'm just being lead to slaughter!"

"I know and it's a terrible thing," said Dash, settling easily into the role of himself, in what felt like almost a lifetime ago. "But Eerie's not big enough for the both of us."

Mars kicked Dash off of him. Dash had forgotten how much that hurt. They both got to their feet and glared at each other.

"You're the one who's behind all this, aren't you? You're the one who's telling that writer bozo what to do!" Marshall said.

Well, not exactly, thought Dash. But you wouldn't believe me if I told you. "C'mon," he said instead. "I'm just a character in a TV show. I'm no more real than you are."

"Dash! People Magazine's on the phone for you!" It was Simon, or the actor who played Simon. That was Dash's cue to look away, Marshall's cue to run.

The way Dash remembered it the first time, this was how this particular encounter ended. He was so excited that the fine folks at _People_ wanted to talked to _him_\--had actually convinced himself at the time that this was a sign all this was real--that he'd let Marshall get away without comment.

This time, he changed it. "It doesn't make a difference!" he yelled after Marshall. "The script says you're dead! You hear me? You're dead!"

He still wasn't sure what difference it was going to make, until he heard Marshall in the distance muttering to himself. "The script says I'm dead. The script. It's all in the script."

Yeah. Marshall Teller had always been smarter than Dash sometimes gave him credit for.

***

In the end, of course, Marshall rewrote the script and reality reasserted itself. Mars was alive again, back with his loving family and loyal associate, off to see _Revenge of the Corn Critters_.

Dash was angry.

By the time he finally found the old milkman sitting by his truck outside the World O' Stuff, he'd progressed to full-on enraged.

"I never should have trusted you!" Dash screamed at the old man. "You lied to me!"

"I did? When?" said the milkman, sounding surprised.

"You said if I went back and changed things, none of this would have ever happened!"

"I said everything would go back to being as it should be. And it has."

"No, it hasn't!" said Dash. "The part where Marshall saw my real name? That didn't happen now. The Marshall Teller who lives in this reality doesn't know that!"

"Well, yes. I though you understood causality enough by this point in your life to realize..."

"That if I never shot him, he never wound up in reruns? Which means he never saw the milk carton? Yeah, I figured that part out already. But you told me Marshall would help me find out who I am."

"I didn't say it would be today," the milkman pointed out.

"You didn't say it would be never, either."

"Well, no. What makes you think it will be never?"

"He remembers, doesn't he?" said Dash. "He remembers exactly what happened on that TV set, and what I was planning. That part still happened."

"Yes, I'm afraid it did."

"So why would he help me? Why would he ever speak to me again?"

"Dash," the milkman stood up and put a hand on Dash's shoulder. "I feel safe in saying that you and Marshall are only at the beginning of what promises to be a long and very strange association. And, yes, you will get the answers you're looking for. As far as him ever speaking to you again, you might try apologizing."

Dash backed away and stared at him. "You're full of it," he said. "You're just like those NBC people. I never should have trusted any of you!"

Dash ran about half a block, then turned, and screamed, "You're going to regret the day you ever met me, old man!" before disappearing down the street.

***

The old milkman watched him go. "Oh I already do," he said to himself. "At least once, sometimes twice a day."

A figure emerged from the back of the milk truck. He was another old man, maybe even as old as the milkman himself, though with a slightly less lined face. His hair was thinning and grey, but then again it had been grey for a very, very long time. He wore black jeans, a faded red shirt and a long black coat.

His hands were rougher now and somewhat spotted with age, but they still bore the clear + and - marks.

He sat down next to the milkman without looking at him. "You could have told me," he said.

"I could have, yes. But given that the fate of worlds would depend on you acting like a rational being in response to that sort of news, would you tell you any more than you needed to know? Come to think of it, why didn't you? You could have stepped out of the truck and spilled the entire story here and now."

"Meeting yourself carries inherent risk of paradox," said Dash X. "Besides, okay, fine. I was a little...unstable that year."

"Unstable?" said Marshall. "I would have gone with homicidally insane."

"That was one time! Besides, I apologized."

"Yes, you did apologize. Eventually. Besides, wasn't it more fun finding out the hard way, anyway? You, me, and Simon?"

Dash rolled his eyes. "Well, I wouldn't say 'fun' exactly. What about the part where you died again? Or getting stuck in that temporal anomaly? And when we figured out what was really going on with the mayor and Elvis and almost destroyed all of Indiana in the process? And when Simon finally met his giant alien chicken and Ned showed back up in Eerie and..."

Marshall chuckled. "Yeah, that _was_ all pretty cool," he said.

It wasn't the point Dash was trying to make, but he grinned anyway. "Okay, so finding out the hard way had its moments."

"Did you figure out what wrong with the truck?" Marshall asked, changing the subject.

"Well, the transmogrification circuit's definitely busted. We can pick up a replacement offworld or I can get one here at the World O' Stuff in about 2215."

Marshall nodded. "I'll meet you there. I've got an appointment I need to keep in the Lost Hour. And Dash?"

"Yeah?"

"You're actually going to _pay_ for the circuit this time, right? With real legal tender from the proper time period?"

"Um...why?"

Marshall sighed. "Just try not to shoot anybody."

***

_Addendum to note to self for the next life: It's not a good idea to kill someone unless you're prepared to deal with the possible consequences. Like the fact that they might bring it up during every single argument you have for the next ninety years or so._

**Author's Note:**

> Written for v_voltaire in Yuletide 2008.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Rerun Milk Carton (Or Four Names that Could have been Dash's)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4861094) by [flashforeward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward)




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